ESL Video Quiz: Steve Jobs about managing people

Steve Jobs: One of the keys to Apple is, Apple’s an incredibly collaborative company. And so, you know how many committees we have at Apple?
Journalist: No.
Steve Jobs: 0. We have no committees.
Journalist: No committees.
Steve Jobs: We are organized like a start-up. One person’s in charge of Iphone OS software, one person’s in charge of Mac hardware, one person’s in charge of Iphone hardware engineering, another person’s in charge of worldwide marketing, another person’s in charge of operations. It’s, we’re organized like a start-up; we’re the biggest start-up on planet. And we all meet for 3 hours once a week and we talk about everything we’re doing, the whole business. And there’s tremendous teamwork at the top of the company, which filters down to tremendous teamwork throughout the company. And teamwork is dependent on trusting the other folks to come through with their parts without watching them all the time. But trusting that they’re gonna come through with their parts and that’s what we do very well. And we’re great at figuring out how to divide things up in these great teams that we have and all work on the same thing, touch base is frequently and bring it all together into a product. We do that really well and so, what I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and solve problems to make new products, to make new marketing programs whatever it is.
Journalist: And are people willing to tell you you’re wrong?
Steve Jobs: Haha…
Journalist: I mean other than snarky journalists, I mean people you work with…
Steve Jobs: Oh yeah, no we have wonderful arguments.
Journalist: And do you win them all or…?
Steve Jobs: Oh no I wish I did! Oh see you can’t. If you wanna hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win otherwise good people don’t stay.
Journalist: But you must be more than a facilitator who runs meetings, you obviously contribute your own ideas.
Steve Jobs: I contribute ideas sure! Why would I be there if I didn’t?